“For those who believe—as I do—that the clerics who rule Iran must never have an arsenal of nuclear weapons, the United States’ course of action ought to be clear: The Bush administration should advocate direct, unconditional talks between Washington and Tehran.” So writes AEI’s Reuel Marc Gerecht in yesterday’s New York Times in “Attack Iran, With Words.” His point is simple: “If the mullahs don’t want to negotiate, fine: making the offer is something that must be checked off before the next president could unleash the Air Force and the Navy.” Moreover, he thoughtfully argues that we need to wage a war of ideas, put Iranian leaders on the defensive, and open the country to internal debate.
I am all for knocking Tehran’s leaders off balance, but Gerecht is wrong about the best means of doing so, at least at this moment. Last week, the Associated Press reported that the Bush administration is sharing with the International Atomic Energy Agency additional information proving that Iran once maintained a bomb-building program. Washington hopes that the agency’s inspectors will then confront the Iranians with the evidence. Over the last two years, the United States has provided to the IAEA material from an Iranian laptop, smuggled out of Iran in 2004, that showed the country had been working on, among other things, the best altitudes for detonating nuclear warheads.
We have not been the only ones lending a hand to the IAEA. Yesterday, the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran charged that Tehran was speeding up its nuclear weapons program, it has obtained the assistance of North Korea, it is developing at a location in southeastern Tehran a nuclear warhead for its medium-range missile, and it has set up a command and research facility near a Tehran university. The NCRI said it provided substantiation to the IAEA on Tuesday. In 2002, this dissident group alerted the world to Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program and since then has provided information, some considered reliable and others still unverified. The information released yesterday, if true, would indicate that the National Intelligence Estimate released in early December is incorrect insofar as it states that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons program in fall 2003.
Are the latest NCRI allegations correct? We don’t know at this moment. Yet we can see that these charges put the mullahs on the defensive. So we should not, as Gerecht suggests, try to begin a new round of talking to them. In short, there’s nothing more to discuss with Tehran’s clerics. We shouldn’t attack them with words. We need to hit them with facts.
To an extent, he is right. This recession is spiraling downwards now because consumers are not spending (because they fear layoffs and asset collapse), businesses are not investing (because they fear consumer spending), and people are not investing (because the stock market might go down another 40%). If Obama can restore Obama to these three groups, economic growth will resume.
I’m skeptical one bromide-spouting president can accomplish this.
“Just getting people happy again, with greater hope — we’ll be able to build ourselves out of the rut we’re in right now.”
Let’s just say that those who spent the last 8 years moping and are all of a sudden now hoping ain’t the types that actually build much of anything. Except maybe giant puppets. They appear to be really good at that.
And, to build on the good comments in #1, the last eight years have proved that it is not guaranteed that America will continue to see freedoms, civil liberties and justice expand, as we have experienced throughout our lifetimes. The rollback of habeas corpus, adoption of torture as policy, denial of the Geneva Conventions, expansion of an autocratic executive and inclusion in state constitutions of language denying some citizens marriage rights, when previously constitutions were about recognizing rights — all of these previously unthinkable, unconscienable, un-American happenings — gave many people a sense of hopelessness. A majority of Americans, by voting for Obama, proved that they were not going to let the forces of darkness win, or continue down the road of moral bankruptcy. And that is plenty of reason to be hopeful.
I’m not sure I’ve seen an expansion of civil liberties throughout my lifetime. I’ve been blessed to see the end of racial discrimination in this country. But then I’ve also seen that a tiny parent-run nursery school cannot hire one of two part-time teachers without advertising in a 100-mile radius and filing a huge document to show that they did not discriminate in hiring. (The nursery school closed; it couldn’t afford to comply with the regulation.)
I’ve seen that an ordinary citizen cannot give more than $2000 to the candidate of one’s choice, while a newspaper or a publisher can donate propaganda every day. In fact, they can even release information that the government I elected classified as secret, and face no charges.
There are laws now about what kind of toilet or light bulbs you have to buy, what kind of food you are allowed to eat. Of course the whole regulatory regime is also paid for by the highest ever level of taxes reducing the percentage of assets that I can control as I wish. So no, I would say that my areas of autonomous choice have been shrinking.
But while these laws abound, we don’t seem to be able to enforce the rules of the Geneva Convention, that ununiformed fighters who hide in civilian populations are not to be treated as prisoners of war, or the rules of our own Constitution, that habeas corpus applies to citizens, not to foreign fighters against us.
Of course, this is a long-term trend in all developed democracies. It’s pushed along by stooges like Drew who ignore the real limits placed on their fellow citizens and use rights as a crowbar to undermine their own society.
Drew, I am still looking for people who lost HOPE because three terrorists were water boarded.
On the other hand for several years out MSM was screaming that economy will go down and now our hopenchange President says that it will be much worse for along time. That really makes a lot of my friends lose hope a AND stop spending.
These types of idiotic ads are all over DC. MoveOn has similar ads in the Metro and so does the SEIU. They’re everywhere you look down here. It’s easy to get Obama fatigue just walking around DC.
I agree, Drew. I used to be free to leave my house whenever I wanted, but now I have to check with the Federal Marshalls first. When I was laid off, I didn’t have the freedom to look for a job without Cheney’s approval.
Please, stating there are less individual freedoms after 8 years of Bush is idiotic. Sure, it’s a popular myth on the left fridges, but like most leftist myths, it has no basis in reality.
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Dellis Says:
January 16th, 2009 at 3:22 PM
Your skepticism is well placed. I submit that it is the gathering liberal storm that has people spooked. The fifty-two percenters notwithstanding, I think that people are fearing the collapse of the free enterprise system in favor of a nouveau-nationalist/socialist economy. Since no one is permitted to escape failure by virtue of bailouts, etc., capitalists rightly conclude that there is also an equal impediment to success.
Personally, I say bring on the liberal storm – a full gale of Pelosi, Reid, Obama, Kennedy, Franken. Pull out all of the stops. Let them do their worst. Rip the mask from their facades. I have had it with their holier-than-thou posturing and preening.
We need to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that these far left liberals are just as dangerous to our Constitutional Republic as any boxcutter-wielding terrorist.
And no, I will not apologize for what some might consider hyperbole. It is well past time for Conservatives to stand and deliver. If those in government who consider themselves to be conservative will not stand against this abomination, then let them stand aside and we’ll find someone else who will.
Otherwise, prepare to be fitted for your shackles.
Well, I am certainly hopeful that, at least (and probably at most), I’ll finally be able to get a good Cuban cigar (if they still make them) at my local newstand (if we still have one). The smoke will help mask the stench of the innumerable failed economic stimulus packages (we should start using Roman numerals, like the SuperBowl) that will be rolled out, and then roll down the road, like tumbleweed.